News

Distraction Series 12: Helen Keller or Arakawa

Front cover of Madeline Gins’s Heren Kerā matawa Arakawa Shūsaku (Helen Keller or Arakawa). Translated by Momoko Watanabe. Tokyo: Shinshokan, 2010. In honor of Blindness Awareness Month, Distraction Series 12 focusses on Madeline Gins’s book Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994) and the influence that Helen Keller had on Arakawa and Gins’s architectural practice. While Helen Keller is an extremely well-known figure in both the United States and Japan, Gins’s in-depth meditation on Keller’s thought and experience goes well beyond the usual elementary school focus on Keller’s childhood and tutelage under Annie Sullivan. Gins incorporates direct quotes from Keller along with poetic imaginings of her experience of being both blind and deaf and employs these against a backdrop of Arakawa’s paintings in particular to probe the ways in which we experience the world as well as what it means to inhabit an architectural body. Her Socialist Smile (2020), a new documentary film on Helen Keller by filmmaker John Gianvito, was available to stream last week as part of the New York Film Festival. With its focus on Helen Keller’s political activism, it highlights Keller as an historical figure who is still very relevant, something Arakawa and Gins felt deeply. From the

Distraction Series 11: ARAKAWA Shusaku Interview, at the ICC, Tokyo, 1997

・*CLICK HERE FOR TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW* For Distraction Series 11, we are delighted to share an interview Arakawa gave in Tokyo, 1997, at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), available for the first time with English subtitles. You can also find the English transcript of the interview on the Reversible Destiny Foundation website. In this roughly thirty-minute interview, Arakawa discusses what it means to him to think across two languages as well as the concept of the architectural body. He then waxes philosophical on human-made nature, civilization and architecture, and the relationship between computers and art. Conducted by Yukihiro Hirayoshi (professor of design and architecture at Kyoto Institute of Technology; formerly, curator at the National Museum of Art, Osaka), this interview not only provides insight into Arakawa’s approach to his work and his thoughts on a variety of related subjects, it also offers an interesting snapshot of the late 1990s from the point of a view of an artist. In the following year, the ICC held an exhibition of Arakawa and Madeline Gins’s work, entitled The City as the Art Form of the Next Millennium ARAKAWA/GINS (January 24th–March 29th, 1998), which featured a large model of a Reversible Destiny city

Distraction Series 8: Arakawa’s MISTAKE, Lecturer: Satoshi Yamada

https://youtu.be/v6_N6xqWAd8 For Distraction Series 8, we are very pleased to present a ten-minute excerpt of a two-hour lecture by curator Satoshi Yamada on a work by Arakawa entitled 35’ by 7’ 6” and 126 lbs. No. 2, 1967-68. This lecture was given on May 13th, 2012, at the Nagoya City Art Museum, where Mr. Yamada was a curator at the time. NCAM houses sixteen works by Arakawa in its permanent collection, along with an additional five works on long-term loan from the Estate of Madeline Gins. As the museum is located in the artist’s hometown of Nagoya, NCAM has focused on developing a collection that covers a broad range of Arakawa’s artistic experiments: it spans from the sculptures of the late 1950s (his so-called ‘coffin’ series), to sketches revealing his thought-process, and finally to the large-scale paintings of the 1980s that anticipated his move toward architecture in collaboration with Madeline Gins.   Satoshi Yamada, currently the chief curator of the Kyoto City Museum of Art, conducted a 2-year-long study of Arakawa’s work in 2003–2005 with two other fellow curators, forming the organizing committee of the 2005 exhibition “Analyzing the Art of Arakawa Shusaku” at NCAM. This in-depth research project and

Distraction Series 10: A round-the-world armchair vacation with Arakawa and Madeline

1. Madeline poses as Arakawa casually leans on Toltec warrior statue in Tula, Mexico. Given the current limitations on travel, Distraction Series 10 is here to bring you on a round-the-world armchair vacation with Arakawa and Madeline. From Mesoamerican ruins in Tula, Mexico, to Italy, France, Japan, and various locations in New York state, join us as we travel through time and space from the point of view of our two founders. We’ve pulled around twenty photographs from our archive for your viewing pleasure – scroll down for the images with descriptive captions. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, you’ll find Arakawa and Madeline posing, taking photographs, examining their environment, and planning their day over breakfast. Enjoy! Yours in the reversible destiny mode, Reversible Destiny Foundation and ARAKAWA+GINS Tokyo Office 2. Arakawa and Madeline all bundled up in front of snowy, thatched cottages in Japan. 3. While Arakawa photographs his environment from a boat in Venice, Italy, someone else turns the lens on him and Madeline. 4. Madeline poses in front of a field of haystacks in France, as if she has just stepped into a Monet painting. 5. Arakawa looks pensive in the shadows against the backdrop of a French

Distraction Series 9: Questionnaire from Madeline Gins

Photograph of Madeline Gins (seated in the second row from the front at the far left) in Grade Six, Radcliffe Road Elementary School, Island Park, NY, 1952 For the ninth iteration of our Distraction Series, we have pulled a questionnaire from our archive that Madeline had her mother give to her Fifth-Grade class on January 20th, 1969, the day Richard Nixon was sworn in as President of the United States. Lucy Ives, editor of The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader, wrote a lovely piece about this questionnaire for the Poetry Foundation in April of this year. Madeline’s questions focus in on thoughts – where do you feel them, from where do they come, where do they go, what are they made of? And she then has the children conduct a practical exercise (drawing a circle), before asking about their thoughts while carrying out this particular activity. Finally, the questionnaire asks the children to explain the difference between children and adults, state their most interesting thought, share their oldest memory, and come up with an interesting question to ask their teacher. The fascinating responses from the children have thoughts taking the shape

Distraction Series 8: Arakawa’s MISTAKE, Lecturer: Satoshi Yamada

For Distraction Series 8, we are very pleased to present a ten-minute excerpt of a two-hour lecture by curator Satoshi Yamada on a work by Arakawa entitled 35’ by 7’ 6” and 126 lbs. No. 2, 1967-68. This lecture was given on May 13th, 2012, at the Nagoya City Art Museum, where Mr. Yamada was a curator at the time. NCAM houses sixteen works by Arakawa in its permanent collection, along with an additional five works on long-term loan from the Estate of Madeline Gins. As the museum is located in the artist’s hometown of Nagoya, NCAM has focused on developing a collection that covers a broad range of Arakawa’s artistic experiments: it spans from the sculptures of the late 1950s (his so-called ‘coffin’ series), to sketches revealing his thought-process, and finally to the large-scale paintings of the 1980s that anticipated his move toward architecture in collaboration with Madeline Gins. Satoshi Yamada, currently the chief curator of the Kyoto City Museum of Art, conducted a 2-year-long study of Arakawa’s work in 2003–2005 with two other fellow curators, forming the organizing committee of the 2005 exhibition “Analyzing the Art of Arakawa Shusaku” at NCAM. This in-depth research project and his years

Distraction Series 7: Sky No. 2, 1968

Arakawa, Sky No.2, 1968, acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in *CLICK HERE FOR PRINTABLE RECIPE* In 1968, Arakawa produced a number of works that took his use of stenciled and written language in a more playful direction than we saw in the paintings included in documenta 4. In canvas and print form, he reproduced recipes for lamb stew, fried pork with sweet-sour sauce, banana cake, and coconut milk cake. These recipes were, in a sense, readymades, found in one or more cookbooks that Arakawa and Madeline had on their shelf. They all follow a similar formula: Arakawa copied a page onto the surface of each work and then diagrammed the ingredients. For Distraction Series 7, we present you with our playful response to Sky No. 2, 1968, pictured above, which involved baking the Coconut Milk Cake recipe as it is written in cursive over the surface of the canvas, up until we are left hanging with this final sentence: “To serve, fill between the layers with:”. This incomplete direction seems to demand that the viewer fill the layers by filling in the blank. They may immediately look to the diagram at the bottom to see if that offers

Distraction Series 5: Virtual tour of Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka(2020年6月1日 公開)

For Distraction Series 5, our Director, Momoyo Homma, leads us on a tour of the Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA – In Memory of Helen Keller, in Tokyo, Japan. We are very grateful to Nobu Yamaoka, the director of the two documentary films presented in Distraction Series 1 and 2, “Children Who Won’t Die” (2010) and “We” (2011), for filming this experience. Follow along as Momoyo guides us from the building entrance up to one of the lofts, where she walks us through how this unique living environment affords ample opportunity to stretch and move the body in new ways. Special guests Yuma and Sono, two of the children who appeared in “Children Who Won’t Die”, speak about their experiences from their time living in one of the lofts. Speculating about what it would be like to live in a Reversible Destiny City, Yuma imagines that there would be no war in the future, an observation that Arakawa himself frequently made. Rokka, a two-year-old who currently lives in one of the lofts, also demonstrates fun ways to use the space. In addition to this private tour, we want to bring to your attention a 15-minute episode of the NHK World program

Distraction Series 4: Segue Series Reading at Double Happiness, May 19, 2001

With the launch of The Saddest Thing is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader, edited by Lucy Ives, we wanted to take the opportunity to share with everyone more of Madeline’s poetry and other writings. Some of you may already be aware that a number of audio recordings of Madeline’s public readings and lectures are available on PennSound, a wonderful UPenn project that produces new audio recordings and preserves existing audio archives related to poetry. Thanks to this incredible resource, we can all listen to Madeline read some of her writing aloud, which adds considerably to the experience of engaging with her poetry in particular. For Distraction Series 4, we are highlighting Madeline Gins’s Segue Series reading at Double Happiness, NYC, that took place roughly 19 years ago on May 19, 2001. We especially loved this set of readings that beautifully shows Madeline’s profound ability to be serious while maintaining a sense of play. In this selection, she begins with a series of poems on the Krebs Cycle, which she states she “does not want any biochemist to declare as cute,” and intersperses them with poems about eating Spaghetti, seemingly lighthearted but deeply related, and

Distraction Series 3: Puzzle Creature by Neon Dance

For the third iteration of our Distraction Series, we are pleased to share a full-length recording of the world premiere performance of Neon Dance‘s Puzzle Creature at Kamigo Clove Theater during the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, on September 15th, 2018. This new immersive dance work was inspired by the death-eluding architecture designs of Arakawa and Madeline Gins. Since 2017, with research assistance from the Arakawa + Gins Tokyo Office, Japan, and the Reversible Destiny Foundation, NY, London-based group Neon Dance has been studying and exploring the philosophical concept of “architectural body” as defined by Arakawa and Madeline Gins in their 2002 book of the same name. Artistic Director/Choreographer Adrienne Hart’s archival research and visits to their built works in both New York and Japan came together in the creation of Puzzle Creature. Three exquisite dance artists drive this 60-minute performance with wearable artefacts created by the award winning artist Ana Rajcevic forming curious imprints of choreographed action. Puzzle Creature is accompanied by a newly commissioned score for 8 speakers by Oxford based composer Sebastian Reynolds, the work features integrated British and Japanese Sign Language and audio description from Louise Fryer. Organisms that person (you and I) are invited to

Distraction Series 2: WE, Madeline Gins

In this second installment of our Distraction Series, we are sharing Nobu Yamaoka’s documentary film, WE (2011), featuring Madeline Gins. This film follows Madeline from her studio at 124 West Houston Street to the Bioscleave House in East Hampton, NY, offering another opportunity to spend time with Arakawa+Gins’s reversible destiny architecture. Throughout the film, Madeline provides an intimate look into her extensive, decades-long study of the body, undertaken with Arakawa, as we watch a family explore, navigate, and react to the challenging terrain of Bioscleave House. Thanks to the director’s generosity, this 60 minute film will be available through the end of June, 2020. In case you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, Children Who Won’t Die (2010) is also available through June via our website. We hope you enjoy We (2011) and will be in touch again with another distraction in two weeks’ time! Yours in the reversible destiny mode, Distraction Series 2: WE, Madeline Gins w/ Japanese subtitles 65 minutes, 2011 How does the body meet the future ? Madeline Gins – poet, architect, visionary – talks about the origin of creation, its secrets, and the future of humanity. This film documents a visit with her

Distraction Series 7: Sky No. 2, 1968

Arakawa, Sky No.2, 1968, acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in In 1968, Arakawa produced a number of works that took his use of stenciled and written language in a more playful direction than we saw in the paintings included in documenta 4. In canvas and print form, he reproduced recipes for lamb stew, fried pork with sweet-sour sauce, banana cake, and coconut milk cake. These recipes were, in a sense, readymades, found in one or more cookbooks that Arakawa and Madeline had on their shelf. They all follow a similar formula: Arakawa copied a page onto the surface of each work and then diagrammed the ingredients. For Distraction Series 7, we present you with our playful response to Sky No. 2, 1968, pictured above, which involved baking the Coconut Milk Cake recipe as it is written in cursive over the surface of the canvas, up until we are left hanging with this final sentence: “To serve, fill between the layers with:”. This incomplete direction seems to demand that the viewer fill the layers by filling in the blank. They may immediately look to the diagram at the bottom to see if that offers any hint. When it

Distraction Series 1: Children Who Won’t Die, ARAKAWA

  Dear Friends, In these uncertain times, strength and solace can be found in belonging to a community and we wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for being a part of ours. We are all discovering new ways to access and explore art and its potential. As our contribution, the Reversible Destiny Foundation along with ARAKAWA+GINS Tokyo office is pleased to introduce our Distraction Series, a biweekly newsletter with links to a variety of A+G projects. Today, we are sharing Nobu Yamaoka’s 2010 documentary film, Children Who Won’t Die, which introduces the utopian vision of Arakawa and Gins with a focus on the Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka in Tokyo, a culmination of their research into the way the body interacts with the architectural space that surrounds it. With extensive footage of Arakawa speaking about the project, along with first-hand accounts from residents of the Lofts, Children Who Won’t Die, offers a look into how the challenging environment of the lofts shifted each person’s experience of daily life, opening up into a poignant meditation on life and death. Thanks to the generosity of the film’s director, the full-length 80 minute film will be openly available through the end of

NHK WORLD “Close to ART: The Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka “

Close to ART: The Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka April 15, 2020 9:30 – 9:45 / 15:30 – 15:45 / 22:30 – 22:45 April 16, 2020 3:15 – 3:30 April 19, 2020 20:10 – 20:25 “The Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka” is a colorful group of housing units located in Mitaka, a sleepy Tokyo suburb. Designed by artists Arakawa Shusaku and Madeline Gins in 2005, the buildings function as both art and living space. The 9 lofts are designed “not to die,” taking residents out of their comfort zones with spherical rooms, bumpy floors and more. We talk to those who live and work here as we discover what motivated Arakawa and Gins to build the lofts in the first place. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/3019110/

Distraction Series

  Distraction Series 10: A round-the-world armchair vacation with Arakawa and Madeline   1. Madeline poses as Arakawa casually leans on Toltec warrior statue in Tula, Mexico.   Given the current limitations on travel, Distraction Series 10 is here to bring you on a round-the-world armchair vacation with Arakawa and Madeline. From Mesoamerican ruins in Tula, Mexico, to Italy, France, Japan, and various locations in New York state, join us as we travel through time and space from the point of view of our two founders. We’ve pulled around twenty photographs from our archive for your viewing pleasure – scroll down for the images with descriptive captions. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, you’ll find Arakawa and Madeline posing, taking photographs, examining their environment, and planning their day over breakfast. Enjoy!   Yours in the reversible destiny mode,   Reversible Destiny Foundation and ARAKAWA+GINS Tokyo Office     2. Arakawa and Madeline all bundled up in front of snowy, thatched cottages in Japan.     3. While Arakawa photographs his environment from a boat in Venice, Italy, someone else turns the lens on him and Madeline.     4. Madeline poses in front of a field of haystacks in France, as

[Report] Yoro Art Picnic 2019

An event organized by Yoro Park, Gifu called “Yoro Art Picnic” was held on 2nd and 3rd of November, 2019. This is the third year of the event, and ARAKAWA+GINS Tokyo Office has participated as one of the organizers of this Yoro Art Picnic. Reversible Destiny Talk –Arakawa, Madeline, and Site of Reversible Destiny Yoro Park “How did Yoro’s Site of Reversible Destiny come about? This will be a valuable talk welcoming Shunkichi Baba who has a deep and friendly relationship with ARAKAWA + GINS both publicly and privately covering the stages of conception up to the subsequent housing construction and incomplete grand town-building. Wonder Tour @Site of Reversible Destiny Yoro Park “In this tour you will have an “”expedition”” into the Site of Reversible Destiny with Dr. Yoshiharu Sekino, explorer and anthropologist known for the “”Great Journey”” where he followed the approximately 53,000km path that the human race born in Africa used to cross all the way to the southern tip of the Americas. Architectural Tour: Discover the site of Reversible Destiny,YORO ! A tour where you will encounter various mysteries at Yoro Site of Reversible Destiny, led by Megumi Hirabayashi, who worked for 10 years as the exclusive

The Open lecture by Sheung Tang Luk at the Kansai University, Umeda Campus

Open lecture by Sheung Tang Luk, Projects manager, Reversible Destiny Foundation, who’s currently in Japan as a visiting scholar at Kansai University. Title: How to walk the Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator Date: Sunday, October 27 Time: 15:30-17:00 Venue: Kansai University (Umeda campus #601) Admission: free Language: English *with Japanese interpretation

The Open lecture by Sheung Tang Luk at the Kansai University

The Open lecture by visiting researcher  will be held on October 15, 2019 at the Kansai University, Sakae campus. There will be a keynote lecture, given by Sheung Tang Luk, Projects Manager, Reversible Destiny Foundation. For more information http://www.kansai-u.ac.jp/Fc_hw/2019/09/1015-1.html

New York Times T-magazine

A big article on Arakawa + Gins and their architectural projects in NY Times T Magazine, issued yesterday, August 20; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/t-magazine/reversible-destiny-arakawa-madeline-gins.html

Film screening + Discussion: For Example (A Critique of Never)

Sunday April 14, 4pm  Emily Harvey Foundation537 Broadway, 2nd FloorNew York, NY 10002 Free of charge One of two experimental films directed by Arakawa, For Example (A Critique of Never), 1971, closely follows its protagonist, a homeless boy, as he wanders the streets of downtown New York City. Shot in a documentary style, the camera observes every step of his examination of the constantly shifting relationship between his body and its surroundings. At the time of production, Arakawa and Madeline Gins were deeply engaged in research on the workings of the mind and the body in the process of perceiving the world. The film premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972. The screening will be followed by a talk and Q&A with Andrew Lampert, an artist, archivist, and frequent writer on art and cinema. He will illuminate Arakawa’s film from the context of the late 1960s – 1970s experimental film scene.     Speaker Biographies: Andrew LampertAndrew Lampert has created an eclectic and extensive body of films, videos, photographs and performances since the late 1990s. He exhibits regularly with past shows including: The Whitney Museum of American Art (2006 Whitney Biennial), The Getty Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, PS1/MoMA, The New York

Testing the Limits: Arakawa X Isamu Noguchi @ Christie’s New York

With their expansively imaginative works, New York-based artists of Japanese descent Arakawa (1936–2010) and Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) both pushed artistic, conceptual, and ideological limits throughout their lives—from the line between art and design to the borders within cultural identities. This program invites Brett Littman, Director of the Isamu Noguchi Museum and Garden, in conversation with Miwako Tezuka, Consulting Curator of Arakawa and Madeline Gins’ Reversible Destiny Foundation, to discuss these artists’ kinship in genre-defying interests and activities. Sunday March 17, 2pm The Woods Room at Christie’s New York 20 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10007 Free of charge http://www.reversibledestiny.org/news/testing-the-limits-arakawa-x-isamu-noguchi Testing the limits of any one medium is a good way of going about testing the limits of the universe.  — Arakawa (ca. 1988) Speaker Biographies: Brett Littman has been the Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York since May 2018. He was the Executive Director of The Drawing Center from 2007–2018; the Deputy Director of MoMA PS1 from 2003–2007; the Co-Director of Dieu Donné Papermill from 2001–2003 and the Associate Director of Urban Glass from 1996–2001. His interests are multi-disciplinary and he has overseen more than seventy-five exhibitions and personally curated more

Thinking Collections: Field Meeting Take 6, Jan,24-26

FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections by Asia Contemporary Art Week Hosted in collaboration with ACAW Consortium Partner, Alserkal Avenue Dubai, UAE | January 25 – 26, 2019 Curated by ACAW Director, Leeza Ahmady This year ACAW acclaimed annual art forum, FIELD MEETING, premier’s offsite for the first time in Asia, hosted at ACAW Consortium Partner, Alserkal Avenue in Dubai — the MENASA region’s foremost cultural destination and arts organization. FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections will stage a dynamic string of pop-up exhibitions, performances, lecture-performances and discussions by noted multidisciplinary artists, thinkers and creative individuals from all regions of Asia (with a focus on East Asia) in the context of a large regional event, the Quoz Arts Festival. Ahmady’s conceptual framework for FIELD MEETING Take 6 investigates the rightful place of an artist in relationship to one of the most prominently used terms in the art-world today: “collection”. By taking on the task of decategorizing the word “collection” from the gripping talons of the ever-burgeoning global art market, the program aims to reveal and reclaim the artist as the first collector. To collect means to gather and accumulate something significant, whether tangible or not. In this light, artists gather everything, be they specific aspects